Like anyone, I too get quite excited by duty-free shopping and all its dollar saving glory! So on a recent trip home from Bali, we made a stopover at Changi Airport in Singapore to see what bargains we could find! (For those of you playing at home, yes, we purposely detoured from the logical, efficient way home for this shopping expedition).

I won’t go into details of the many purchases made by me and my friends during those few hours, but something worth mentioning is what caught my eye whilst perusing the alcohol section. There was a display of bright, paint-splashed ABSOLUT Vodka bottles – somewhat of an art form compared to the standard ABSOLUT bottles.

I found out that ABSOLUT had released four million of these uniquely designed, limited edition ‘ABSOLUT UNIQUE’ bottles. The new ‘look’ had been achieved by a combination of splash guns, machines equipped with 35 colours and 51 stencils, and placement algorithms to ensure that no two bottles would be alike.

My friends were instantly drawn to them. It was hard work convincing them that it wasn’t worth spending the extra money on an ABSOLUT UNIQUE bottle as it would taste exactly the same as the colourless, regular ABSOLUT bottle sitting a short distance away. Of course I was wearing my ‘rational’ hat at the time – I know it’s not really about the ‘taste’.

Nonetheless, this example demonstrates the strong pulling-power of this design innovation. And this becomes even clearer with a quick glance at ABSOLUT’s Facebook page. Many fans have posted photos of the unique bottles they have purchased on the Facebook page, while others say they want to collect them all! I struggled to find any negative comments…

I think ABSOLUT has hit the nail on the head with this one! Ultimately, it works because everyone wants to be an individual – the younger demographic especially! So offering a product that no-one else can possibly have is bound to be a winner.

But what use is being an individual if no-one knows you have a one in four million bottle? Well, tell the world on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and problem solved!

I’m willing to bet this innovation will be both a sales AND social media success!

By Victoria Parr, Managing Director, Latitude Insights Sydney office 

At the last AMSRS conference I presented a paper on the research to develop the design of plain packaging for tobacco products (yes, that colour…… Pantone 448C). During the questions that followed, an audience member highlighted that even though the emphasis of the conference had been on new methodologies and digital data collection, most of the papers dealing with significant social or community impact had used very traditional methods, including mine.  He was questioning the tension between the ‘new’ methodologies and the need for delivery of robust and evidence based research that is required for government research.

This is an issue that I believe many in the audience of that last conference were grappling with, especially those of us that work within the social and government sphere. Our government clients are similar to commercial clients in that they too need to do everything cheaper and faster. They are also aware of that ‘new fangled’ thing called the internet, and they know that  people now have 100′s of friends and followers whose profile pictures they see on a daily basis, and who they converse with in 140 characters or less.

How our government clients differ is that the research they do is funded by all Australian taxpayers, so all of us in the community who are relevant to the problem need to be represented in the research. It is a critical part of the democratic model of government that all have chance to express their views and opinions on matters that affect them,  and that means the research we do must be representative of the population in question.

And here lies the crux of the issue.

As I said at the conference, government needs to be accountable and need to  ensure reliability of rigorous and robust research methods to achieve this. But at the same time, the world is changing and we all know that the way people are communicating is now different. We type to communicate almost as much, if not more, than we verbalise our thoughts. As AMSRS committee member Victoria Gamble gamely said when called out to take the roving microphone at the conference ‘I don’t like to speak in front of so many people, that’s why I use twitter’.

So my question is, if we don’t start to talk to people using the same way they communicate with each other, are we in fact losing some of the rigour of the research? Not only do we miss representation of the people who will not elect to do face-to-face qual, are we also not missing a vital part of capturing their views and opinions by not communicating with them in the way they are accustomed to?

Fishkin[1] wrote about deliberative democracy and public consultation under the title ‘When the People Speak’. My question is about recognizing that how people are speaking is now, in fact, different and we in the social and government side of research need to explore this issue more, both clients and suppliers alike. All methodologies, both the tried and tested and the ‘new’ have their faults. What we really need to consider as we look at each new project or problem is what method is going to really give a voice to those whose views and opinions we are trying to represent?

Gamification is surfacing in all corners of life from education and training to physiotherapy, improving your health with health monitor, communicating a social cause, soliciting friends for moral support with nike+ and even driving the new Ford Focus. Market research is one of the more obvious and advantageous applications.

Here’s my beginner’s guide to gamification…

1. Gamification is the concept of creating a fun, engaging experience to encourage users to participate in what otherwise would be a relatively boring task.

2. Worldwide, a staggering 500 million people spend an hour each day playing games online and on mobile devices and by 2016 corporations are expected to spend $2.8 billion on gamification.

3. Brands and organisations are discovering that interacting with people in a fun way produces positive results. Meanwhile traditional methods of marketing, education and other activities are failing as people seek out and receive new, more engaging ways of doing things.

4. The key benefit of gamification is the enhanced level of involvement and engagement. When an interaction is gamified, it creates a more intimate connection through the positive experience, rewards and recognition that build affinity and loyalty.

5. With gamification there is enormous potential for word of mouth recommendation through the sites like fanzy that reward fans
for spreading the word about your brand via social networks.

6. The success of the activity can be easily monitored through the use of metrics to track users who share content and friends who track back to the brand.

Surveys have traditionally been gap fillers, but these days, the prospect of completing a questionnaire is much less attractive than doing something like honing one’s investing skills in the carefully tailored Commonwealth’s Investorville, helping bring back rare creatures to the sea through theblu app or earning points while saving the planet on recyclebank. These are the calibre of activities with which our surveys compete making it increasingly more difficult to attract participation and a quality, considered response.

I’ll leave you with this short film, an entertaining perspective on where we may be heading with gamification and virtual reality. Enjoy!

Personally, I would say a bit of both. It just depends on who I’m talking to and what I want to say. I don’t mind sending out the odd tweet and text message, but if I’m going to ask my husband to pick up some milk on the way home, then a phone call might be better.

So why is that marketers think that they have to have a marketing strategy for digital and a separate marketing strategy for ‘traditional’ forms of communicating with their consumers?

This is what Steve Sammartino from Grey advertising talked about at a breakfast seminar I recently attended. One of things that rang true the most for me was his comment that “We need to get rid of the word ‘digital’. There’s just humans and communications.”

His comment was aimed mainly at marketers who think they need to have a digital presence by setting up Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. So they employ a Digital Marketing Manager to do the job. Similarly ad agencies will have two departments – ‘Digital’ and ‘Traditional’ advertising. Research agencies also seem to suffer a similar malaise with agencies who seem to favour just digital or traditional approaches.

The bottom line however, is that it shouldn’t be about the technology that is or is not used to communicate to consumers or clients. It’s about recognising and embracing that as human beings, we use a lot of different ways to communicate with each other. The latest social media revolution is just another one of the tools at our disposal. And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that ultimately it’s about communicating in the most efficient and logical way.

Typically, this will mean a combination of both digital and traditional approaches – a clear integration of the ways and means to get the message across. And this applies to marketers communicating with their consumers, businesses communicating with their clients and humans communicating with one another.

On that note, I better text, tweet and phone my husband to ask him to pick up that milk on the way home!

Anyone with a brand would be asking this question – what is the ROI on a Facebook fan? Jon Bird from Inside Retail has managed to hunt down an article that gives some insight into this question – The true value of a brand fan.

Anyone in business knows that it’s often easier to retain the customers you have rather than ‘recruit’ new customers to your brand. Tough economic times such as those we are experiencing now, and the level of competition that can be seen to get the almighty consumer dollar, makes this scenario especially true.

With many brands now having Facebook pages for their fans, it is worth asking the question – What is the value of a Facebook fan?

Some interesting revelations emerged via the study Jon Bird came across – ‘The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review’, by an organisation in the US called Syncapse

The study (undertaken about a year ago) looked at 20 of the top brands on Facebook in the US. Fans and non-fans were compared on six variables: product spending; loyalty; propensity to recommend; brand affinity; media value; and acquisition cost. The brands studied were skewed towards manufacturers, but did include Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks and McDonald’s. What became apparent was that fans are quantifiably more valuable to businesses across all variables:
• On average, fans spend an additional US$71.84 per year on products compared to those who are not fans (In the case of McDonald’s, fans reported spending US$159.79 more per year).
• Fans are 28 per cent more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand.
• Fans are 41 per cent more likely than non-fans to recommend a ‘liked’ brand to their friends.

So here’s the question for you, have you got your Facebook page set up?

My grandfather-in-law, who lives in England, recently turned 100. I was very excited for him, greatly anticipating the obligatory telegram from the Queen.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “We have to write to them to request one.”

WHAT?!

My local video store knows my date of birth, along with my local pharmacist, my local library, my hairdresser, my beautician and just about all the major retailers with whom I have a loyalty card. But the Queen’s Anniversaries Office, can’t find out when I turn 100? I thought digital technology was making it easier to find out such information!

OK. So we get over that hurdle and request a telegram.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “He got a birthday card.”

A BIRTHDAY CARD?!

I was disappointed. It’s not the quaint, old fashioned telegram that I was expecting and I’d never seen a real telegram before so I was looking forward to checking out this traditional form of communication. But neither was it a new and innovative way to send your wishes like a tweet or a Facebook message (don’t you just love it when your Facebook page gets filled with birthday messages? – but I digress). No, it’s somewhere in that grey area of being almost – dare I say it – common.

I wonder if when it’s my time to turn 100, I’ll be receiving a tweet from King William? Or perhaps that will be considered too “quaint”, “old fashioned”, “traditional” or “common” by then. I can just hear my daughter now…. “Oh Mum, tweeting is so yesterday!”

It’s incredible to think so much has changed over the past three years. As Charleni Li points out in her recent blog Groundswell Paperback: A Look Back Three Years Later, it was only back in May 2008 that Facebook and Twitter were still emerging trends. Even more incredible, the iPhone had no apps! Can any of us now imagine a world without our iPhone, without Facebook or without Twitter? I know I can’t!

And marketers and researchers alike are embracing these technologies to reach their different audiences.

This then led to me on to a bit of a tangent, wondering whether MROCs (market research online communities) or insight communities have yet fully ‘emerged’. It seems the world of marketing research may be lagging a little?  There are still many who are wedded to the idea of focus groups sufficing for all qualitative research.  Which continues to amaze me, because once the richness, depth of information and honesty online research community members reveal, there’s really no going back.